Thomas Evans Rees and the The Little Place in PD

In the context of the parish of St. Mary’s, Pembroke, in West Wales, 30 North Street, Bufferland, Pembroke Dock is not a particularly old house. Nonetheless it encapsulates part of the story of the new town of Pater, or Pembroke Dock as it soon became known, from the middle of the 19th Century until today.

On 8 August 1864, Thomas Evans Rees, shipwright, of Pembroke Dock took out a 60 year lease on a plot of land on the south side of North Street, Bufferland, a new suburb of the burgeoning town.

Ordnance Survey map for Bufferland, Pembroke Dock laid over an extract from  Bush Estate Map book c1830now in Pembrokeshire Archives.

A closer view of Bufferland, Pembroke Dock, in about 1850

The western end of North Street had been laid out across some of the fields of Hill Farm from about 1840, and from 1864 The Bush Estate leased out further plots of land in what had formally been  a field on the land of  Hill Farm overlooking the Pembroke River.

Who was Thomas Evans Rees? First, let us look at his father.

His father was Daniel Rees, a master watchmaker, born in about 1806 in Narberth. Daniel’s wife was Jane Evans, of Haverfordwest, and it is likely that Thomas gained his middle name of Evans from his mother’s maiden name – a tradition that persisted amongst many families at this time.

In 1841 Daniel Rees and his family lived in a house at the southern end of Pembroke Street, number 22. He appears in the Pigot and Co. directory for 1844 as a watchmaker. In 1851, Daniel is still in Pembroke Street, but by 1861 he seems to have moved his home to the street parallel and next west to Pembroke Street  – Market Street. In the directory he is referred to as David Rees, but the 1861 census for the town shows him occupying premises next to the Farmers Arms in Market Street, living with his wife, daughter and grand-daughter. In 1868 Daniel (aka Daniel M Rees) was still practising his trade as a watchmaker,  but, according to Slater’s directory for that year, he had returned to Pembroke Street. He died in the summer of 1870 and was buried on 20 June. His grave is recorded as that of David Morgan Rees, watchmaker.

Daniel, as a clock and watchmaker,  was involved in the installation of the Clock in the tower of St John’s Church in Pembroke Dock in March 1865. The local press announced the plans in October 1864 saying that the clock “when completed will be a very great boon to the inhabitants of the town.”

St John's Church, Pembroke Dock showing the clock installed in 1865 by Daniel Rees.

The installation of the clock was reported in the Pembrokeshire Herald and General Advertiser for 17 March 1865.

Thomas Evans Rees was Daniel and Jane’s second child. The oldest child was William Humphreys Rees, born in Narberth in 1829, who disappears from the family home after 1841, probably joining the Royal Engineers in 1850. Another brother of Thomas Evans was James Valentine Rees, born in Milford in 1833. The youngest of his siblings was a sister, Arabella Esther Rees, born in Pembroke Dock in about 1836.  Thomas Evans Rees was baptised in Tenby on 23 March 1831.

By 1851, still living in the family home, Thomas Evans was an apprentice shipwright, working in The Royal Dockyard Pembroke. On the 13 March 1858 he married Bridget Day. Bridget had been born in Ireland in about 1833. They were married in St John’s Church, Pembroke Dock. When the census enumerator called,  for the census of 1861, they were visiting their friends, George and Jane Sutton in Laws Street, Pembroke Dock. George, like Thomas Evans, was a shipwright, but much older than both his Irish wife Jane and her friend Bridget. Thomas George Rees - Thomas Evans’ and Bridget’s first child - was 1 year of age and Bridget and Thomas Evans may well have been showing him off to their friends for the first time. 

It seems as though the relationship between these two families developed further as one of Thomas Evans' later children’s mother seems to have had the surname Sutton, not Day.

The dockyard at Pembroke Dock, in the 1860’s, had for a while, an uncertain future. The era of the wooden sailing ship as a vessel of war was ending, and as Pembroke was distant from other centres of production, some in high office wished to see the place closed. However, in the end, it was decided to modernise the dockyard to build the new iron, steam powered ships. 

Consequently, new steam mills and forges had to be built and working techniques adapted to metal. A by-product of this was that large stocks of timber, intended for wooden ships, lay surplus to requirements over most of the area of the yard. There were concerns at government level that all the dockyards were being run inefficiently with much wastage of materials, and indeed in some places the stockpiles of wood were just left to rot in the open.

One way of reducing the stockpile of timber was for the dockyards to sell it off at auction. This happened on a regular basis at Pembroke, starting from about 1870.

However, there must have been “unofficial” sales or disposal of timber before this date, as was witnessed by the quality of timber used in the building of the houses of Pembroke Dock. Local lore has it that timber was dropped surreptitiously into the waters of the haven and then collected later from wherever the tide (or a rowing boat!) might take it. It is highly likely that much use was made of dockyard facilities for the making of wooden (and metal) items for the households of local craftsmen.

What does this have to do with a little end of terrace cottage in North Street, Pembroke Dock? The answer is, of course, plenty! The men who worked in the dockyard included many with highly developed and – in modern parlance – “transferable” skills. These were applied to the building of houses, particularly the flooring and “fitting out” of these houses.

Thomas Rees Evans was a shipwright, which meant he was very skilled in the use and working of wood, so when he took on the lease of one of the first building plots on the eastern extension of North Street, he had access to the materials, the connections and skills to undertake his own home build.

In the next post I will talk about the terms of the lease that Thomas Evans....and many like him ... took on in the summer of 1864.

An abstract of the lease for Thomas Evans Rees' building plot in North Street, Pembroke Dock, from a Bush Estate lease book held by Pembrokeshire Archives.